I tried to post this comment at Phil Giraldi’s column at Unz Review; twice. Both times it vanished as though I’d never attempted a post, no ‘pending moderation’, it just disappeared.

Phil states:

<blockquote>More than fourteen years later it is perhaps past time to reveal what exactly the FBI knew and currently knows about both the scale and modus operandi of Israeli espionage in the United States. Did Israel have critical intelligence either in broad outline or possibly in specific detail about 9/11 and let it happen to bind Washington more closely to it in a “global war on terror?”</blockquote>

We’re not going to find out from the FBI and here’s why; James Comey’s trajectory was from HSBC board director, where he’d been brought on to plug leaks concerning that banks activities (includes laundering international narcotics trafficking and gun running monies) to FBI director.

Following a several years series, here’s a partial list of the leaked activities:

Not exactly the guy you’d like to see in charge of the FBI but it follows a precedent; former FBI director Robert Mueller had been the point man at the DoJ who sabotaged the prosecution of HSBC guns and narcotics trafficking money laundering predecessor BCCI (and was rewarded with becoming FBI director)

I’ve had no problem posting (2) other, unrelated, comments at the same. So, I’d thought I would post the comment here.

A bit more I’ll add here is, HSBC and BCCI have been terrorism money laundering operations with links to western intelligence agencies, inclusive of MOSSAD and CIA in relation to arms trafficking, narcotics trafficking and funding insurgencies. Are the people shielding these activities who you would want to see heading up the FBI? Not really. But that’s what we’ve got. And it’s what we’ve had for quite a long time. Here’s a screenshot of Comey’s HSBC position:

A leaked phone call between the European Union’s Cathrine Ashton and the Estonian foreign minister, indicates it was a member (or members) of the new USA supported Ukrainian administration were behind the snipers who killed both protestors and police during confrontation in Kiev. (conversation begins about 2 minutes into this youtube posting)

John Kerry had claimed it was the ousted administration behind the snipers. A better explanation (backing up the leaked conversation) is found in rogue CIA officer Phillip Agee’s expose: ‘Terrorism and Civil Society‘

It’s pretty simple actually. The USA’s ‘vital national interests’ (and western democracies generally) is euphemism for corporate welfare, corporate welfare is all about the bottom line (profit) and profit historically has happened when we take raw material at gunpoint from disadvantaged nations. Modern corporate neo-colonialism creates social unrest and consequent fighting back which has evolved to ‘terror’, which in turn strengthens the market place in the ‘security’ or arms industry. The overthrow of Gaddafi (for reasons including he wasn’t buying high end weapons from France, following his ‘rehabilitation’) started brush fires (e.g. Mali) with his now unemployed mercenaries, ‘lost’ weapons flow and western trained guerillas/insurgents moved on to instances of ‘jihad’ the western powers feel must be in turn stamped out. This strengthens the cycle of spreading ‘terror’ which again strengthens the outlay for security, propping up western economies in what has become a war of civilizations.

In the case of Djibouti and a new one billion dollar drones base being built there, there is yet a French Foreign Legion presence hanging on from colonial era with the region surrounding nearby Somalia in process of destabilizing since Charles Grassley’s efforts provided a vast arsenal of American weapons to the regime of Mohammed Said Barre nearly 30 years ago. Barre in turn employed those weapons to wreak a biblical terror on his own nation. This has impacted from Ethiopia to Kenya and beyond.

When nations are in cycles of violence, their raw materials can be had on the cheap by corporations because of instability and attending corruption, increasing stock values from Frankfurt to London to Toronto to Wall Street.

The result at home? ‘Terror’ propaganda leading to the loss of civil liberties and increasing consolidation of the corporate-power corrupt over the vast and spreading malignancy of the entire cycle. This fact can only lead to our national demise when you factor in the western democracies own ‘jihadis’, i.e. extreme ‘Christian Taliban’ personalities attracted to the ‘security’ business. Now days the Pentagon is fundamentalist Christian crusader central and has moved from ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’ to ‘the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim’ as a matter of policy in a pursuit of world-wide “manifest destiny.” And so reality is created for us and reality is pointed to literal Armageddon, the consequence of living beyond our means.

The other side of this coin is, if the arms and related ‘security’ expenditures were halted, the resulting jobs loss would finish collapsing the western democracies economic engines, where the armaments industries are a critical component of the dynamic propping up our infrastructure.

What are the chances the western democratic leaders will surrender ego to reality and begin dismantling this hydra? Not good when reality is we should be moving towards construction of changed climate Hobbit burrows to survive.

It had been reported in the New York Times the CIA has been handing off many millions of dollars to individuals in the Afghan government to buy influence. Using open source analysis, I will propose a case for these many millions being heroin trafficking ‘hush money.’ But first, a bit of history:

In 1970, serving in Vietnam, I had transferred from the 199th Light Infantry Brigade based at Long Binh, for extended tour of duty with the 330th Transportation Company located at Vung Tau. The US Army Airfield at Vung Tau was an advanced aircraft maintenance location, primarily, with a runway that could handle freight aircraft up to a C-130. By far, however, it was mainly a service center for helicopters needing advanced repairs, engine overhauls, rotor replacements, et cetera. Among other tasks, I worked airfield perimeter and flight line security. We had fully armed Cobra gun ships for airfield protection that needed secured from possible sapper attack, particularly, as well as the more typical security needs. The period was from October of 1970 to November of 1971.

As an E-5, I had responsibility for men on the perimeter at times, at other times on the flight line. Perimeter duty in my sector was parallel to the landing and take off (main) runway. This was Vietnam approaching late stage conflict. Heroin addiction was estimated by myself and other non-commissioned officers to be about 30% of the US Forces enlisted men on this airfield. Our own company and it’s platoons were about this average level of addicts as was our understanding this being the similar case of the other Army units located there.

Again and again, over this 13 month period, heroin ran out. It could not be missed when nearly a third our soldiers at Vung Tau, a few hundreds of men, went into physical and mental symptom of withdrawal. It was not pretty. This was not the weak, comparatively speaking, heroin someone would needle. It was STRONG. It was smoked or ‘snorted’ up the nose. Intravenous use of this drug would have been almost instantly fatal. Tremendous quantity of the drug was consumed by these horrifically addicted men.

Vung Tau could not be easily supplied with heroin on demand, without some serious interruptions, in the large quantities required to maintain the habits of hundreds of badly addicted soldiers by Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents. The location was separated from the mainland by bracken marsh, accessed by a single causeway secured in multiple sectors with tightly controlled traffic having to pass American and Australian security checks. By sea would have been more likely, but here it is also problematic for the un-interrupted enemy supply of our soldiers with drugs. Vung Tau was highly secured by sea with armed patrol boats because of the high military value of its mission. It is a small area of land with essentially little coastline to secure. Security was tight. Interdiction would have been a near certainty, at least once in a while. It didn’t happen.

The Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents of course did not have air access to us. The CIA did.

It was nowhere near rocket science to note the CIA airline Air America flight that parked 1/4 mile away from every other aircraft, never came in to parking area. 3 people, armed, stayed with the aircraft, command staff car picked up 2 others. Luggage (nearly modern steamer trunks filled with not only heroin but also high grade marijuana) for at least 10 (TEN) people was picked up by a 3/4 ton truck, with 2 persons riding with the baggage, 1 left guarding the aircraft. All airfield personnel were strictly instructed NEVER to approach the Air America flights. They never stayed more than several hours. Bingo, heroin flush by that evening. Again and again. Every time the soldier’s suppliers had run out of heroin, there was an Air America flight landed. Problem solved, the addicted soldiers were functional again.

After Vietnam I served with 19th Special Forces Group as (11F40) Sergeant for Operations and Intelligence, working together with some of the best in the field, a position that eventually pointed to my later career as an investigator. In conversation with special forces veterans of CIA liaised Indochina operations, it became clear CIA narcotics trafficking in Vietnam was not a ‘one off’ by some isolated or small rogue element. I continued to follow the CIA in the available sources and have made some assessments, drawn some conclusions.

The covert, operational or ‘black ops’ sector itself of the CIA has been the source of major narco-trafficking or, there has been a large and well organized rogue element within this sector where oversight is problematic. These people are in major international drug trafficking and their worldwide tracks are beginning to emerge over time, with overwhelming circumstantial evidence.

It had been established by the 1970s and reported on in media that the CIA had bought the loyalties of tribes in the so called ‘Golden Triangle’ opium producing region with cash for their crop, the most likely or closest proximity, raw base or source of the heroin in Vietnam. War zones with covert logistics for intelligence services are perfect opportunities to commercially process on large scale with no effective police oversight. Again and again, reliable CIA narcotics trafficking accounts have surfaced only to be quashed, noting in the linked affidavit, the Iran-Contra’s Robert Gates associated Richard Secord, and George W Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (at time of invasion of Afghanistan.)

After Vietnam, and the loss of direct military backing in force for our covert agency and no longer in control of the necessary areas in the region, heroin waned and cocaine became big. One only has to look at the tracks of the graduates of the School of the Americas, and connect the dots. This is the CIA associated initial source of the leadership training that has today’s Mexican Federal Police sometimes overwhelmed in pitched battles with drug lord militiamen that are now days professional commandos. Move south from there and you had Noriega in Panama, same source of training and a CIA asset, became a major international narco-trafficker.

South farther again and you have Uribe associated with cartels, right wing militias and associated death squads, CIA, School of the Americas training, all in the mix of Colombia, and drug trade and coca production is up there, eradication a farce. In 2005 you find Gulf Stream jets used in the CIA renditions are passing through the hands of known CIA assets, to Uribe family linked cartel, one had crashed in Mexico carrying 4 tons of Cocaine as noted in the narco-sphere news:

“the Gulfstream II was purchased less than two weeks before it crashed in Mexico by a duo that included a U.S. government operative who allegedly had done past contract work for a variety of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, according to a known CIA asset (Baruch Vega) who is identified as such in public court records. The four tons of cocaine onboard of the Gulfstream II at the time of its crash landing, according Vega, was purchased in Colombia via a syndicate that included a Colombian narco-trafficker named Nelson Urrego, who, according to Panamanian press reports and Vega, is a U.S. government (CIA) asset”

And now Mexico is severing its relationship with the CIA having anything to do with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and it is a smart move (when considering the Pentagon has enlisted Blackwater as a contractor in the business.) Meanwhile the ‘war on drugs’ discovers the Rick Perry administration in the George W Bush home state of Texas moves very quickly to shut down investigators who’d discovered high powered American judges, politicians and law enforcement at parties thrown by drug cartels. Couple this to a joint Blackwater/CIA covert assassination program that had been run by known cartel killer Enrique Prado, coupled to Erik Prince’s known religious extremism with ties to and funding of the American religious right, one may more than speculate international narcotics trafficking is funding Rick Perry’s Islamophobic Tea Party.

The CIA trafficking in Latin America is the most well documented, on account of the Iran-Contra affair having spilled into the open. And it is here we come up with the Bush family criminal syndicate who’s who of international narcotics traffickers .. oh and that ties into George H.W. Bush’s close buddy Bill Clinton, the business is a bi-partisan bag of maggots.

A Robert Gates linked Iran-Contra player, Duane Clarridge, had a ‘private’ CIA operating in Afghanistan, run by an Air Force contractor named Michael Furlong The New York Times had reported. Some 40 days after this story broke, we see this:

By waiting 40 days since this had spilled, Robert Gates had given damage control in this affair ample time to meet, plan, erase tracks, create false leads, and destroy evidence. Throughout his series, the New York Times reporter neglects to mention Robert Gates is also an Iran-Contra figure with a history of cover-up, investigated by prosecutor Lawrence Walsh who stated:

“By October, when Gates claimed he first remembered hearing of the diversion, Casey ordered an inquiry and later made a report to Poindexter; but, by then, the Hasenfus aircraft had been shot down and Casey and Gates were beginning to cover.”

Now the clincher. More than 90% of this years Heroin supplied to the world (90% TO THE WORLD) will come from poppies grown in Afghanistan. This is not just the Taliban folks, it is the CIA. Cleaning up the problem or cornering the market? It would very much seem any ‘drug eradication program is window dressing the problem while in actuality cornering the market. This thought is buttressed by the Russian experience with attempting cooperation in cleaning up the hundreds of heroin labs in Afghanistan, with the American military commanders at the top blocking any efforts:

After, (video, above) the Russians’ high visibility whistle-blowing, there is grudging (and minimal) actions by the USA, busting just a few labs out of hundreds and ONLY those labs it would seem are not under the CIA’s protection. The southwest of Afghanistan is the poppy region where the USA military had taken a ‘hands off’ attitude and done little to nothing to address the problem. Any drug interdiction program efforts had been initiated against only THOSE OPUIM FARMERS WHO DO BUSINESS WITH THE TALIBAN, or 15% of the labs and traffickers. As the USA winds down the American military involvement, it is clear the problem had never been honestly addressed.

Meanwhile, a British ambassador had been sent packing for investigating the problem from neighboring Uzbekistan and subsequently pens an article “Britain is Protecting the Biggest Heroin Crop of All Time.” It is interesting to note his linking a murdered former Russian anti-corruption investigator, Alexander Letvnenko working for MI6, had uncovered the Afghan heroin pipeline to St Petersburg… a crime blamed in popular media on Russia with no mention whatsoever of his connections in this regard. Litvenenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to concurrently cooperate with Spanish authorities on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipelines. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 now also having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking. In the end, it come down to western complicity in the Afghan heroin trade is old news.

And in a 2009 interview with Phillip Giraldi, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has the following to say:

EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.

There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.

GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?

EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.

GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?

EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.

Criminals do not voluntarily surrender their business models. Cleaning up the problem is not going to happen until the CIA covert operations is brought under control. The CIA, or a rogue element within the organization has been, personally enriching themselves for decades as international narco-traffickers, my assessment. All the while using our nation’s ‘Security’ together with all of the power of the apparatus the term implies, to cover a rogue and criminal club within our ranks. And so, another example of how it is the pursuit of violence through wars corrupts and/or attracts corrupt people. C’est la vie.

These following stories from the AP WIRE [4 years ago] point to, among other things, CIA having wiretapped DEA to prevent DEA stumbling on CIA international narco-trafficking and continued efforts by our Justice Department to cover-up crime with the state secrets doctrine:

Sep 11th, 2009 | WASHINGTON — A federal judge says the CIA is hiding behind dubious national security arguments to shield itself from a potentially embarrassing lawsuit U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who earlier ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent accused in the suit, has rejected an emergency request to put the case on hold while the government appeals.

The CIA has argued that allowing the case to proceed would divulge classified information, but, in an opinion made public on Friday, Lamberth said there was no good reason to delay.

In the suit, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent claims the CIA illegally wiretapped his home when stationed in Rangoon, Burma in 1993. The agent, Richard Horn, said he became suspicious when he returned from a trip to find his government-issued rectangular coffee table had been replaced with a round one.

The case has been a test of the Obama administration’s use of the so-called state secrets privilege, when the government seeks to block legal action by saying the details that would be revealed would harm national security.

Administration officials have pledged to review all state secrets claims made by the previous Bush administration, but in many cases the government is still asserting the need to prevent disclosures that it says would harm national security.

In the DEA case, Lamberth has previously rejected the state secrets claim. Government lawyers are attempting to reassert the privilege but on different grounds, but the judge isn’t buying it.

“Having lost on their assertion of the state secrets privilege, the government’s new refrain is heads you lose, tails we win,” the judge wrote.

The court case is rooted in an old squabble between the DEA and CIA operating overseas.

Horn claims Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him relocated because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country’s drug trade.

The CIA has not said in court filings whether or not it monitored Horn, but Horn claims he was monitored without lawful authority and in violation of his constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The CIA buys off the DEA

10 Nov 09-

WASHINGTON — The government has agreed to pay $3 million to a former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration who sued CIA officers for illegal eavesdropping

The proposed settlement followed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in July that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against the eavesdropping allegations.

The lawsuit was brought by former DEA agent Richard Horn, who says his home in Rangoon, Burma, was illegally wiretapped by the CIA in 1993. He says Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him transferred because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country’s drug trade.

Horn sued Brown and Huddle in 1994, seeking monetary damages for violating his civil rights. The CIA itself was a defendant in the lawsuit until early this year…..

Then-CIA Director George Tenet filed an affidavit asking that the case against Brown be dismissed because he was a covert agent whose identity was a state secret that must not be revealed in open court. Lamberth granted the CIA’s request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004.

Lamberth found out last year that Brown’s cover had been lifted in 2002, even though the CIA continued to file legal documents saying his status was covert. The judge found that the CIA intentionally misled the court and he reinstated the case against Brown.

The agreement in the case was revealed in court papers filed Tuesday night, and Lamberth will now consider whether to dismiss the suit. Under the proposed settlement, the government makes no admission as to whether the allegations in the lawsuit are true

And:

WASHINGTON — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president of Afghanistan, gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The newspaper said that according to current and former American officials, the CIA pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around Kandahar.

The CIA’s ties to Karzai, who is a suspected player in the country’s illegal opium trade, have created deep divisions within the Obama administration, the Times said

Allegations that Karzai is involved in the drug trade have circulated in Kabul for months. He denies them.

Critics say the ties with Karzai complicate the United States’ increasingly tense relationship with his older brother, President Hamid Karzai. The CIA’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

Some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, a central figure in the south of the country where the Taliban is dominant, undermines the U.S. push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan, was quoted by the Times in an article published on its Web site.

Ahmed Wali Karzai told the Times that he cooperates with American civilian and military officials but does not engage in the drug trade and does not receive payments from the CIA.

Karzai helps the CIA operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists, according to several American officials. Karzai also is paid for allowing the CIA and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city, which also is the base of the Kandahar Strike Force, the Times said.

Karzai also helps the CIA communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban, the newspaper reported.

CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the report.

Followed by this AP story:

“Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan where a large chunk of the new U.S. forces will be deployed, cited corruption — which Karzai has pledged to fight — as the worst problem facing his nation. “The biggest problem is corruption in the Afghan government, police and military but also in some of the companies coming from the United States, Canada and England and Germany,” Hamidi said. “There is corruption and drug dealing by the people who are in power, within the police and the military.”Hamidi said just last month he was told that Taliban were sleeping in the police barracks.”The police are taking money from both sides — the government and the Taliban,” he said. “When we have this kind of police and military, the Afghan problem won’t be solved in 20 years.””

What Hamidi had pointed directly to, is military subcontractors in the employ of CIA, the military and the police, all in bed with both narcotics trafficking and the Taliban.

Wali Karzai and Ghulam Haider Hamidi were both assassinated not long after, Wali Karzai because he was too ‘hot’ (his own CIA liaison killed him) and Ghulam Haider Hamidi because he was too clean ..

27 March 2014 update: Crimea sanctions is the excuse the Obama administration uses to cancel joint efforts with Russia to combat international narcotics trafficking. Read the facts at the Moscow Times

1 May 2014 update: “We are not scared from the government, because most of the officials have their share in the harvesting”Read the article at usnews.com

10 June 2014 update: New information comes to light on the CIA rendition jets subsequently moved over to narcotics traffickers, read the article at narconews.com

9 July 2015 update: Corresponding perfectly with the Department of Defense & CIA gaining control over the opium production in Afghanistan: “CDC health officials said that the US is in the grip of a heroin epidemic, with abuse of the drug doubling among 18-25 year olds, doubling for women, and rising among white people by 114 percent over a decade from 2002 to 2013.” Read the story at RT and see the facts posted at the Center for Disease Control.